In conjunction with VIZBI 2018, we are excited to announce the Data Visualization Masterclass, a one-day tour of state-of-the-art methods, taught by internationally acknowledged experts in data visualization happening on Tuesday, March 27, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm at the Kimpton Marlowe Hotel (~10 mins walk from the Broad Institute). The masterclass will teach you the principles and practices for turning data into insightful visualizations that tell compelling stories. The class is for anyone working with data, including communicators, scientists, programmers, designers, and visual artists. The masterclass will feature highly acclaimed international speakers: Kim Goodwin and Drew Berry.
Author Archive
Data Visualization Masterclass 2018 (Cambridge, MA)
Thursday, February 8th, 2018Drew Berry’s latest exhibit
Monday, February 24th, 2014In this video, Drew Berry talks about a unique exhibit he created for Melbourne’s White Night, which took place last weekend. Drew gave a keynote talk at VIZBI 2011, ran a tutorial at VIZBI 2013, and also plans to attend VIZBI 2014.
NVIDIA Best Poster Award for VIZBI 2013
Saturday, March 9th, 2013NVIDIA have just confirmed they will again sponsor a very attractive prize for the best poster at VIZBI 2013: their high-end Quadro K5000 professional video card, retailing for US$2,199. One of the world’s fastest GPUs, this card is designed for large-scale visualization of complex data; it supports up to four displays, has 1,536 CUDA Cores, 4GB of GDDR5 memory, a single-precision performance of 2.1 Teraflops, and the ability to render 1.8 billion triangles per second. Such performance allows real-time rendering of stunning photorealistic, interactive 3D scenes. We have extended the deadline for poster upload until midnight PST, March 14 . In addition to scientific posters, each participant can also upload an artistically-inspired ‘Art & Biology’ poster (see here for more details). The award for best poster will be decided by popular vote.
2012 Visualization Challenge winners
Wednesday, February 6th, 2013Winners of the 2012 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge have just been announced. In total, 15 outstanding entries were announced as either winners or honorable mentions in 5 categories (Photography, Illustration, Posters & Graphics, Games & Apps, or Video). The four featured below are (from left to right): a photograph of the microscopic crystals that make up a sea urchin’s tooth (Gilbert & Killian; U. Wisconsin); CT scans that reveal the shell structure of a clam and a whelk (Fung, Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital, Hong Kong); a side-by-side comparison of X-ray and traditional microscope images of several fruits, each containing a tiny seed (Sykora et al., Charles U.); a video showing stunning images of coral symbiomes obtained using laser scanning confocal microscopy (Farrar et al., U. Hawaii). To see all 15 winning entries, click here.
VIZBI 2013 call for participation
Tuesday, December 18th, 2012
We are pleased to announce VIZBI 2013, the 4th international meeting on ‘Visualizing Biological Data’ to be held at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge MA (USA), March 20-22. VIZBI 2013 brings together scientists actively using or developing computational visualization to study a diverse range of biological data; the conference also encourages participation from medical illustrators, graphic designers, and graphic artists.
VIZBI 2013 features 21 invited talks from high-profile speakers that will review the state-of-the-art and challenges in visualizing data from genomes, transcripts, proteins, cell biology, organisms, and populations. Prior to the meeting (March 19), there will also be tutorials on visualization tools & methods. All VIZBI participants have the opportunity to present a poster describing their work. Just before your poster session, you will be given ~60 seconds and 2 PowerPoint slides to briefly introduce yourself and your poster to all VIZBI participants (details here). If you cannot join us in Cambridge, USA, you have the option of virtual registration, which allows participation via streaming video and chat. The first three VIZBI meetings have been very lively events, and have helped fostered a new focus on data visualization in the life sciences – videos of previous meeting are available at http://vizbi.org/videos. VIZBI 2013 will have a special focus on data from research methods that are new, but rapidly emerging – we hope you can join us for this exciting event!
ECCB paper deadline extended
Monday, April 2nd, 2012Last chance to publish your paper on biodata visualisation at ECCB 2012: in case you missed the March 30 deadline for paper submission, the organisers announced they have extended the deadline to Sunday April 8, 2012 (midnight GMT). For details, see http://www.eccb12.org/proceedings.
ECCB 2012 call for Biodata Visualization papers
Thursday, March 15th, 2012Another key bioinformatics meeting has created a paper track specifically for biodata vis & imaging papers. The European Conference on Computational Biology is the key European computational biology event in 2012, taking place 9-12 September 2012 in Basel, Switzerland. This year, ECCB specifically invites papers on biodata visualisation – the deadline for papers is 30 March 2012.
uPy wins NVIDIA best poster award at VIZBI 2012
Wednesday, March 14th, 2012At VIZBI 2012 last week, the NVIDIA award for best poster was decided by popular vote; the winning poster was D18 – uPy: a ubiquitous Python API with biological modeling applications enables ePMV & autoFill by Ludovic Autin, Graham Johnson, Johan Hake, Arthur Olson, Michel Sanner from Scripps & USCF, California, USA. uPy provides a Python interface that lets users drive several computer graphics programs (Blender, Maya, Cinema4D, DejaVu) as well as two Graphical User Interface toolkits (Tkinter and Qt). The uPy group received an NVIDIA Quadro 6000 professional video card, one of the world’s fastest GPUs. Congratulations!

Faster ‘beta’ VIZBI server available
Monday, March 5th, 2012As the current VIZBI web server has become slow and has had recent crashes, we have been preparing to transfer the site to a new, much faster server. The new server still has minor glitches but is close to fully functional: the speed-up is particularly useful to navigating the VIZBI posters. Thus, we have decided to make it available as a back-up server during VIZBI 2012 under a temporary URL (http://bioviz.info/). Many thanks Jean-Karim Hériché and Venkata Satagopam!
VIZBI 2012 posters now online & zoomable
Monday, March 5th, 2012VIZBI 2012 posters are now online at http://vizbi.org/Posters/2012; the collection of 75 images and abstracts can be navigated graphically (via image thumbnails), browsed by author or title (via list view), or searched by full text (via VIZBI site search). To help explore these high-resolution images, we made them easily zoomable in any browser using Seadragon Ajax (uses Javascript only, no plugins needed). I believe that in the near future zoomable, high-resolution images will become indispensible in science and beyond; the VIZBI zoomable poster collection can be a showcase, highlighting how this technology can benefit scientific meetings and scientific communication. Many thanks to everyone who contributed, especially Jim Procter & Sven Haag.
NVIDIA Best Poster Award for VIZBI 2012
Monday, February 20th, 2012
We have just confirmed NVIDIA as our latest bronze sponsor, joining Amira and Bitplane, together with our silver sponsor Autodesk. NVIDIA have generously donated a very attractive prize that will be awarded to the best poster at VIZBI 2012: their Quadro 6000 professional video card. One of the world’s fastest GPUs, this card can render 1.3 billion triangles per second, and retails for US$4,999. If you are looking for some extra motivation to improve your VIZBI poster before the submission deadline this weekend, check out these videos demonstrating how the Quadro 6000 can produce photorealistic, interactive 3D scenes as well as detailed, interactive biomedical animations.
2011 Visualization Challenge winners
Tuesday, February 7th, 2012Winners of the annual International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge have just been announced. Outstanding entries featuring biological visualisation include: a video from Graham Johnson (VIZBI 2012 speaker), Andrew Noske, and Bradley Marsh showing a system for interactively visualising cellular compartments (1st Place and People’s Choice); a photograph from Bryan Jones showing a mouse eye with colouring used to highlight 70 distinct cell types (1st Place); a 3D illustration from Andrew Noske, Thomas Deerinck, Horng Ou, and Clodagh O’Shea showing mitosis (People’s Choice); and a poster from Ivan Konstantinov, Yury Stefanov, Alexander Kovalevsky, and Anastasya Bakulina showing the Ebola virus (honourable mention).

Manuel Lima’s ‘Visual Complexity’ book
Sunday, January 29th, 2012
In case you missed it, late last year the book Visual Complexity appeared from Manuel Lima (VIZBI 2011 keynote speaker), and has been very well received.
Drew Berry’s ‘Hollow’ video
Sunday, January 29th, 2012
A few months ago, Drew Berry released a video with the musician Björk for her song ‘Hollow’ from the album ‘Biophilia’. The video features a beautiful collection of cellular and molecular animations, smoothly zooming between scales, plus a homage to the fruit portraits of Giuseppe Arcimboldo. I highly recommend tracking down the ‘Hollow’ video – it’s great for engaging friends and colleagues; you can probably find it on YouTube, but it is best viewed on an iPad or iPhone, where it has been released as part of the Biophilia app. You can access a preview of the video here.
E.O. Wilson’s Life on Earth
Sunday, January 29th, 2012
Last week, Apple announced several upcoming iPad textbooks that promise a new level of engagement and interactivity: one of the books – E.O. Wilson’s Life on Earth – is being lead by Gaël McGill (VIZBI 2011 speaker and VIZBI 2012 tutor) together with Drew Berry (VIZBI 2011 keynote speaker) as animation director.
Some CPP fellowships still available
Sunday, January 29th, 2012For participants facing financial difficulties, a limited number of fellowships are still available that effectively provide free registration. The remaining fellowships will be awarded on a first-come, first-served basis. To apply, you must submit a poster and application letter – see the CPP section of the VIZBI registration page for details.
Last day for VIZBI 2012 early registration
Sunday, January 29th, 2012As VIZBI 2012 draws nearer, a quick reminder that early registration closes at midnight today (January 29) in any time zone. After this date, registration costs €50 more.
VIZBI 2012 early registration closes soon!
Thursday, January 12th, 2012A quick reminder that early registration for VIZBI 2012 closes in just under three weeks: the deadline is midnight on January 29 in any time zone. After this date, registration costs €50 more. The deadline for poster submission is 26 February 2012.
Last day for free registration at VIZBI 2012
Friday, January 6th, 2012For VIZBI 2012, a limited number of free registrations are offered to students via the EMBL’s Corporate Partnership Programme. To be eligible, students need to submit a poster for VIZBI 2012 before January 7 at 12 noon UTC/GMT. For details, see here.
Last call for ISMB 2012 papers on biovis
Friday, January 6th, 2012A quick reminder that next Friday, January 13 is the deadline for submitting your work on Biological Data Visualization or Bioimaging to the upcoming Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB) in Long Beach, California (USA) July 15-17, 2012. Presenters of accepted papers are given a 20-minute speaking slot (plus 5 minutes for questions) in the conference schedule. Accepted papers will be published in an online part of the journal Bioinformatics, resulting in fully citable articles indexed by Medline and ISI. More information about ISMB paper submission is at:
http://www.iscb.org/ismb2012-submission/ismb2012-call-for-proceedings











